2003 Commencement: Text of Chancellor Hemenway's address to graduates

Congratulations, Class of 2003.

You have chosen once again to wear caps and gowns on a hot, humid day, when black absorbs the full power of the sun's rays, the cap doesn't shade your eyes, and a gown shuts out any cooling breeze.

You have thereby ensured that your last, pungent memory of your alma mater will be the aroma of 5,000 people sweating.

Why the caps and gowns? Why do we do this ceremony? Why not just an e-mail? You, Mclean Thompson, have been awarded a KU degree. You may pick up your diploma at the Registrar's office as soon as you pay your parking tickets.

Like all rituals, KU's graduation ceremony has symbolic meaning. It is repeated, annual behavior meant to preserve the experience and values of the Jayhawk tribe.

The perspiration dripping down your face is a reminder of all those academic challenges you sweated through.

The walk in those gowns down the hill symbolizes your steady march toward graduation.

Your tuition dollars entitled you to a precarious climb up that rocky slope of credit hours, pre-requisites and departmental requirements.

This last semester saw you reach the crest of that hill. Today you walk easily down the other side. Your trek is complete. You have acquired that special, status, you are . . . . a Jayhawk graduate.

The walk you took today represents your academic journey of the past few years. There were tight spots, like the squeeze through the Campanile.

There were friends and family cheering you along the way, as there were today as you descended down the hill.

There was the heavy hand of university authority, one last time.

Those trashcans reading "Deposit Containers Here," the University's way of saying, check your champagne bottles at the door. (And I am sure you did.)

You entered the stadium through a gauntlet of faculty. Why do we do that?

Could they be checking your Arts forms one last time, making sure no imposters sneak through?

Students at other universities graduate. At KU we walk down the hill.

As I say every year, THE WALK IS THE CEREMONY AND NO ONE WALKS ALONE.

George Brown, DSC, walked today 53 years after he graduated, because in 1950 he had to go to work in Denver to provide for his family. George Brown will remember this walk.

Jack Wempe, chairman of Kansas Board of Regents, earned his M.A. degree in 1967, but he's walking the hill today.

We know everyone will remember the walk and who walked with you. The real question is, will anyone remember the speech?

On second thought, I probably know the answer to that question.

But this brutal fact of commencement lifeÜa collective amnesia about what was saidÜactually liberates me as your speaker. As many of you are secretly hoping, I could just sit down.

Not a chance.

Look at it this way: you took four, five, six years to get to graduation, what is another 45 minutes? So, I'll just forge ahead.

The final part of this ritual is the ancient Jayhawk tradition of advice giving, equipping you at the last minute with the real keys to future success. We do this even though we know that advice is a dubious commodity. Lord Chesterfield said those who want it the most usually like it the least.

The New York Times columnist, Russell Baker, once faced this same dilemma. He defended advice-giving on anthropological grounds.

Baker said, "Ancient commencement custom demands that somebody stand up here and harangue the poor graduates until they beg for mercy. The ancient rule is, make them suffer."

Get it? Suffering through the speech is another part of the ritual. It is the sitting part of the walk.

So let me offer 10 short pieces of advice.

First, some advice about money. I realize you don't have much of it now, but there is at least an 11% chance that 20 years from now, after the economy improves and you pay off your student loans, you will have money.

1. Save your dollars. Investments are passŽ. America has rediscovered cash. It doesn't earn much interest in that coffee can buried in the back yard, but you don't lose any in the market either.

2. Be honest with your family. There is a 100% chance that your family thinks you will be self-supporting much sooner than you do.

3. Be honest with yourself. It is not a real job unless they pay for health insurance.

4. Share your blessings. Family comes first. They must be provided for. But then think about others. Think about that homeless guy you saw this morning, pushing the shopping cart with a sleeping bag and a plastic sack full of clothes. The two of you have more in common than you think.

5. This advice comes from your student body president, Jonathan Ng. He says, hang onto your student ID. No one notices the dates, and you can still get student discounts. I might add, it is not widely known, but Jonathan actually graduated 10 years ago. He hangs around campus for the discounts.

Other advice from students: Gabriel Roland, "Never settle." Fouzia Haq, "Take risks, try the new thing." Jenny Lavelle and Heidi Anderson, "Go big or go home." Ohemaa Kumi, "Live life, get crazy, get ER done." Lindsay Demarais, Willie Duensing, Justin Volkers, "Instead of getting a job, let's go back and start over." Matt Duncan, graduating after six years, "If you stay with it you can graduate by default." This is a rule for life as well as KU.

6. I have gotten to know some of you the last few years. Here is some specific targeted advice.

Tommy Fawcett, take the job in Peru. And by the way, those of us from Lawrence still remember when you ran through the high school basketball game wearing only a jock strap, a ski mask, and a superman cape. I don't want to know what is under your gown.

7. Jessica Risley, Teach for America is a great program. But Baton Rouge is full of mosquitoes. Stock up on repellent.

8. Eleanor Bill, my niece: Ellie, please explain once again to your New England grandmother that enrolling at KU is not a study abroad experience. Stay in Kansas. Get a job, and please return that 1969 Volkswagen we loaned you for the weekend your sophomore year.

9. For all Kansans, let's stand up and defend our state. Don't take any guff from that smart aleck in the Atlanta airport who says, "You're from Kansas? Isn't that where they tried to ban evolution last year, and this year they want to outlaw sex?"

10. Final piece of advice. Let me be serious for a moment.

When you leave this stadium today, KU degree in hand, commit yourself to making a better world.

Live with a free and caring intellect, imagining a world where we do not build boundaries between peopleÜa world where race does not divide, where sects do not exclude, where nationality is a source of pride, not fuel for stereotypes.

A wise man once told me, no one on this earth had any choice about the color they were born with. If diversity is good enough for God, it ought to be good enough for us.

As the class of 2003, you have seen more death and destruction than is your share. Sadly, the source of most of that violence has been some form of hatred for those who are different.

You are the generation of 9/11 and the war in Iraq. You have seen how a divided and hateful world can rationalize greed, chaos and the breakdown of civilization.

But go forth from this walk and this university knowing there is more good than evil in this world, and the forces of hope always outnumber the prophets of doom.

Give your children a world that heals, not hurts, a world where people believe in the redeeming power of love more than the corroding power of hate. Teach them to live with tolerance and respect for all peoples. We all share something larger than ourselves, a common humanity that can bind us together more powerfully than any dividing force.

Search for that common humanity. Find it in your own heart and the hearts of others. It is the Jayhawk way.